Germany gazing into the abyss (federal elections)

[spmetla]

Funny how that works, they didn't build any fences when their workers came here to undercut our wages, pay no taxes and rob our cars and homes. But God forbid there's an EU system that they think they don't only benefit from. Then the fences go up within days. How about we build a wall and throw all the eastern euro workers out who "stole our jobs"? If they want to play that game, we should do it, too.

That would probably have gone over well in the mid-90s after the initial 'high' of the Mauerfall passed. Fact is though that East Europeans are culturally more similar to Germans and less likely to end up of forming cultural enclave ghettos due to easier transition into the overall society to include upward mobility. I know I've seen enough sketch comedy from Britain about all the Polish and Hungarian workers that took British jobs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd8oX5NJt84

While open borders sounds good there always needs to be a limit, if the whole of Afghanistan or Nigeria wanted to move to Germany would that be okay? Just because someone wants to move to country X doesn't mean they have a right to. Closed borders and purely ethnic criteria are equally wrong, no need to go back to the Nazi or Communist periods. It is possible to restrict the immigration of non-EU migrants without being racists. The refugee crisis does need fixing but allowing all to enter and forcing the member states to accommodate a quota of refugees isn't the answer.
Unfortunately the solution would require Germany/EU to engage in a active foreign policy in Libya and Syria which includes the possibility of military occupation/peacekeeping until security is well enough established for local governance to be effective and responsive. Leaving the security and stability of Europe's periphery to the US and Russia is obviously not working for the EU which is directly impacted.

As for the election, it will be interesting to see the SPD and AfD as the 'opposition' seeing as the SPD opted out of a Grand Coalition. I don't envision them working together much if at all but seeing German politics with less consensus and more debate will be interesting to say the least.